A Stretch After Winter

Time stretches into timelessness,
lifeless days under leaden skies
counting crows in a damp terrain.
Morning sky is flushed with rose
and evening’s much the same.

But soon the sky bursts into flame.
A thrush trills an early clarion call
and sunlight filters through a haze
of snowdrops and catkins.
Time stretches into timelessness.

Striding out on a day like this
forces chilled air into every pore,
fresh colours dazzle tired eyes,
banishing wintry thoughts of
lifeless days under leaden skies.

Before they flap their wings and rise,
a rattle of bird music fills the air
with clicks, a ringing like a bell,
an echoing caw, and it’s time to start
counting crows in a damp terrain.

Jackdaws join the dark refrain,
their jet wings fill the air with sighs,
a defiant robin joins the choir,
flashing its vibrant scarlet chest.
Morning sky is flushed with rose

and the ground below is juxtaposed,
with churning furrows of brown mud
tinged with the sparkle of fresh rain.
Mornings stretch into timelessness
and evening’s much the same.

Kim M. Russell, 8th February 2024

Image by Jonathan Hislop on Unsplash

It’s Thursday and we’re meeting the bar at the dVerse Poets Pub with Laura, our host, who has us cascading in fives. Aside from giving us lovely examples of ‘free flowing watery lines’ from Henry Vaughan and Lauris Edmonds, she has given us detailed instructions on how to write a Cascade poem, a form created by Udit Bhatia, which is repetitive in a smooth cascading way like a waterfall, reusing each line of the first stanza as a refrain in the subsequent stanzas.

Laura would like us to write hexaverses of six stanzas, in which each stanza has five lines (quintain), and the first stanza provides the repeat lines for the next five stanzas, with repeats as the final line of these stanzas. So, line 1 of stanza 1 becomes the last line of stanza 2; line 2 becomes the last line of stanza 3, and so on. We must keep the opening stanza’s line order in the repeats. However, there are no requirements for rhyme, syllable count, line length etc.

33 thoughts on “A Stretch After Winter”

  2. from the very title, the poem widens right out into life with bird and bush the tell-tale signs. A joy to read and I especially liked how you joined the colour in these lines:
    “a defiant robin joins the choir,
    flashing its vibrant scarlet chest.
    Morning sky is flushed with rose”

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  3. You draw me into seeing through your eyes your world of “counting crows on a damp terrain” — its timelessness and peace and enduring loveliness as music of birds and sky’s color mingle to create this song of your heart. Absolutely loved it, Kim.

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  4. I took a short coffee break from my corporate job and saw the preview for the prompt, then jumped right on over to your poem to see what a completed one looked like and try to gin up the confidence to try it. Wow! I don’t know how you did this wonderful thing so fast after the prompt! It’s awesome. It will likely take me until Saturday morning to finish something, but you have inspired me.

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  7. The transitions of winter are a great choice for the cascade poem, Kim. You can feel the gloom and yet there are bright spots/days in the midst of it all as winter rolls toward Spring. Well done.

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  8. “Jackdaws join the dark refrain,
    their jet wings fill the air with sighs,
    a defiant robin joins the choir,
    flashing its vibrant scarlet chest.”

    I especially like these lines. I can see the bleak and gray and the longing for spring splashed throughout.

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  10. I simply love how you expand into all the life going on when Nature at first seems to be fully at rest you bring in the crows and the jackdows (for me it would also be red squirrels).. with all that life and juxtaposed to the ground in the last stanza I fell the timelssness when I feel dawn and dusk come together into timelessness.

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